• jet@hackertalks.com
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    8 months ago

    From an economic perspective many countries had to develop with sweatshop labor effectively until they built enough prosperity to develop other industries. But without that intermediate sweatshop stage, they couldn’t compete economically, couldn’t get the capital to modernize, and would be stuck in the agrarian phase

    • ArbiterXero@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      That’s really just a bureaucratic way of making it nobody’s fault.

      We don’t need high enough profits to support sweatshops, no matter how “economical” you make the argument.

    • forrgott@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      An “economic perspective” is horribly skewed in favor of the capitalist class; that’s just saying the misery of the commoner is justified by the greed of those who refuse to actually assist in producing any goods or value for society.

      • jet@hackertalks.com
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        8 months ago

        In the context of the United States, which I believe the original poster is talking about. There’s the classic rural problem of how do you keep them down on the farm. There’s many economic opportunities across the whole country, which allows freedom of movement, so people can emigrate to different parts of the country with more job opportunities and more lucrative uses of time.

        So it’s not a dichotomy of work a rotating schedule or starve. There are other jobs in the area, they might be farm labor jobs, they may not pay as consistently, they may not pay as well, but there are economic opportunities in most rural areas. If those are insufficient, people have been known to move to the cities the urban areas where there’s more work opportunities.

        This rotating shift opportunity, is just one of many available to people living in the United States. They’re not being forced into it. People are choosing it of their own free will.

        If we would like to say rotating schedules should be illegal, great, let’s codify that into the labor laws. Vote on it. Then every business will have the same constraints.

        • forrgott@lemm.ee
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          8 months ago

          Oh, for heavens sake. I chose to be born into a life where I can only choose the form of my exploitation, in other words?

          No. It is not in any way shape or form a result of my choice that some business owner is prioritizing money over people.

          Capitalism is not a neutral system. And it’s flaws are certainly not the fault of those being exploited.

          • jet@hackertalks.com
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            8 months ago

            Nobody is forcing your labor. You can live off the land mountain man style if you want to.

            • grue@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              You literally cannot. Homesteading hasn’t been a thing since the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976.

    • UsernameHere@lemmings.world
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      8 months ago

      So you feel the US is still in that intermediate sweatshop stage and that will go away if they could just get the capital to modernize?

      • jet@hackertalks.com
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        8 months ago

        Some areas - yes. Developing a local economy is tricky, for places that don’t have historic concentration of logistics, there has to be a some attractive force to offset geographic conditions, and attract capital and employers to an area.

        I’m all for providing alternative jobs to communities, a national Job corps, increasing military pay, or providing labor laws saying that rotating shift jobs are not allowed. Those are all fine. Giving people better options is the solution.